


Courage

by Dragonbat



Category: Protector of the Small - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M, Gen, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-12
Updated: 2010-02-12
Packaged: 2017-12-20 16:48:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/889561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonbat/pseuds/Dragonbat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faleron catches up with an old friend and becomes aware of the feelings he’s long been suppressing. Written for the SMACKDOWN competiton on the Goldenlake boards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Courage

**Author's Note:**

> Set at the end of Lady Knight.
> 
> Disclaimer: All characters property of Tamora Pierce. No financial remuneration is being derived from this work of fanfiction.

****

**Courage**

Faleron blinked. "I don't believe it," he told the big redhead. "You… and Kel?"

Cleon sighed. "I had hopes for it, but… well…" He shook his head. "It was a dream, King's Reach. A glorious, wonderful dream. And two mornings from now, I'll wake up to find Ermie lying beside me." He managed a sad smile. "It's actually not a terrible prospect. She and I, well, we knew we'd have little say in the arrangement. It's no love match, but… I like her. And she likes me. And there are worse ways to start out." He clapped his friend on the shoulder. "We'll be happy."

As Faleron rode away from fief Kennan, he thought to himself that Cleon hadn't sounded as though he'd been trying to convince himself. He'd been sincere. And in Faleron's own heart, a faint hope began to flutter.

He wasn't sure exactly when he'd first become attracted to Kel. It had been some time in his final year as a page, but there hadn't been an instant that he'd looked at her and imagined spiriting her off to some bower in the woods as though she were the heroine of some romantic ballad. She'd simply been Kel, a girl he'd gradually and grudgingly come first to respect, and then to like.

And every time he'd felt his feelings for her begin to blossom into something deeper, he'd been reminded of the incident that had occurred at the pages' summer camp at the end of his third year. He'd been leading a group of younger pages—Kel among them—when they'd stumbled upon a raider camp. Faced with a small army of desperate bandits in an area where they'd been assured that there were none, he had frozen. Kel, one year his junior, had leaped into command and saved them all.

He'd never resented her taking over. They all would have been dead if she hadn't. But because of that day, he'd never dared to think that she would return his feelings for her. How could she? How, in Mithros' name, could she possibly respect him when her chief memory of him would almost certainly be his cowardice?

Except that, according to Cleon, Kel was currently unbetrothed and unattached. And he'd been only a boy of fourteen with little to no combat experience on that day. Hadn't he proven himself since then? He'd fought bandits, and pirates and Scanran raiders. He'd seen the Kraken, as the expression had it, and survived.

Had Kel treated him any differently after that day? He knew that she had not. Then… perhaps he'd been overly hasty in assuming that she had _felt_ differently about him since then. She'd never taunted him or called him coward, not even when she'd had a reason to do so, and an opportunity to retaliate for his earlier mockery of her own fear of heights.

So why, he wondered, was he afraid that she would mock him if went to her now, to ask her to consider keeping company with him? Or perhaps, he was afraid even of a polite rejection. His jaw set. If he never asked, he would never know. And unlike some of his fellows, who were content to moon over their loves in unrequited agony, Faleron realized that he did want to know whether his feelings were reciprocated.

He kicked his horse to a trot and rode north, toward Haven.


End file.
